Benefits of ballroom dancing
The exercise benefits of ballroom dancing apply to all age groups, which is another attractive reason to take it up as a regular form of exercise.
Ballroom dancing gives you a great all-over cardio workout, where you use your own body weight, similar to what you’d get from an intensive Pilates class. You spend a lot of time bending low and using your legs to push up onto your toes. So it’s an especially good workout for legs and buttocks.
Ballroom dancing is great for increasing self confidence, focus and overall increased wellbeing. Since ballroom dancing is a partner/ group activity, it gives you a sense of community, sparks friendships and teaches you valuable teamwork skills.
Dr Joe Verghese, a neurologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, conducted a study on 469 men and women. Over five years he studied ways of staying active to reduce the risk of dementia and found ballroom dancing to be the most effective physical activity. The main reasons Verghese gave were that the “requirements of ballroom dancing, such as remembering the steps, moving in precise time to the music and adapting to the movements of one’s partner are mentally demanding exercises”.
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